News

Elizabeth L. Krause, 2015 PEP fellow, is interviewed on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia about her recent book "Made in Italy," where she looks at how Chinese immigrant workers in Italy took over large parts of the fashion industry in that country. She says a key to their success is an entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to be self-exploitive in their work ethic.

2018 PEP fellow, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and colleague are both quoted in an article in U.S. News & World Report examining the lack of hiring of African-Americans by oil and natural gas companies during the recent boom years in production.

An opinion column in the Houston Chronicle co-authored by PEP steering committee member, M.V. Lee Badgett and several colleagues, says it's unlikely the current U.S. Congress will pass a law protecting LGBT people from sex discrimination when they marry or reveal their sexual orientation, so any such protection will have to come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a new study led by 2015 PEP Fellow, Rebecca Spencer, and covered by Scientific Reports, UMass sleep researchers find evidence that naps and overnight sleep may work together to benefit memory in early childhood. Spencer, along with several students, report that for children in this study, "Individually, the nap and overnight sleep bouts were not sufficient to induce changes in memory. A significant benefit of napping was observed only when changes across the entire 24-hour period were considered. This supports an interplay between the nap and subsequent overnight sleep in the consolidation of memories in young children." The researchers say another highlight of their work is finding that naps do contribute to emotion processing in preschool children, which is consistent with parents' and early childhood teachers' observations, though this benefit in emotional memory is delayed, say Spencer and colleagues. The research was also featured in the Globe, Laboratory Equipment, Medicine News Line, Science Daily, WBZ Radio, Health Medicine Network, the Recorder, and Science & Technology Research News.

Miliann Kang, 2016 PEP Fellow, comments in Refinery29 about longstanding conflicts between African-Americans and Asians in U.S. society. She says although incidents highlighting these conflicts are not in the headlines all of the time, "the reality of racially-distinct immigrant small business entrepreneurs operating in poor, underserved minority neighborhood persists as a formula for potential conflict." Kang, who has focused her research on Asian-owned nail salons and their racially diverse customers, says tension can run high when salon workers are paid low wages in often poor conditions serving mostly working-class clientele who cannot afford to waste money on subpar services.

PEP steering committee Member, Jennifer Ross, and a colleague were quoted in a feature story in the Gazette on how high school interns are working this summer in some of the laboratories at UMass Amherst. Both faculty members say they are happy to host the paid interns. This story was also featured in The Recorder.

M.V. Lee Badgett, PEP Steering Committee Member, says discrimination against LGBTQ in India costs between 0.1 and 1.4 percent of gross domestic product, based on a review of health care and workplace data in an interview with the Washington Post. She says, “When a country loses that much GDP, normally we say that it’s had a recession.” Her comments are in a news story about how students and alumni from some of the top universities in India are seeking to overturn colonial era laws that are used as pretexts for mistreatment and exclusion of LGBTQ people. India’s Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings in coming weeks on the laws. This research was also featured in the Georgia Voice.

Miliann Kang, 2016 PEP Fellow, writes two columns for the Korea Times. One looks at a new law that limits the workweek to 52 hours, down from the previous 68 hours. She says this is an incremental improvement that provides some benefits, especially to working women. A second column looks at efforts in Korea to end its legal ban on abortion. She says abortion is common, even though it is illegal, and that the government often enforces the ban selectively depending on population trends in the country. Read morehere and here.

New research from the UMass Amherst Center for Employment Equity (CEE) finds that a 2013 extension of anti-discrimination coverage for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has greatly expanded protections for LGBT people, especially for residents of the 28 U.S. states that do not have SOGI anti-discrimination laws. In the report, “Evidence From the Frontlines on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination,” co-authored by PEP Steering Committee member M.V. Lee Badgett, Amanda Baumle, and Steven Boutcher, researchers examined data from more than 9,100 SOGI discrimination charges filed with the EEOC or a state agency between 2013-16. Badgett said the research is important to show that the expanded protections are helping. "We have some patchy laws and policy and some states don't have (protection)." She said the ability to file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission "is really access to justice" and the report shows that even people in states without laws are afforded federal protection. "We hope it's useful (to show) the need to have a policy that does cover everybody in the country." Read more here.